Un/Designing the Borderline: Walls, Bodies, and Creative Resistance

Abstract

ABSTRACT Far more than simply a geographical line, the Mexico–US border is a space wherein aesthetic processes are negotiated, a performative space that attracts and spurs a critical and creative imagination. The essay examines the border as a location of design from various perspectives. Firstly, the real-existing border and its recent installations and installation proposals will be considered, before the attention will be turned to conceptual designs which, understood as examples of artistic practice, broach the issue of such facilities and seek to subvert them through ideas. Contemporary art and design projects address the constructional character of the border and, in part, also deconstruct it, challenging stereotypical ascriptions and thus turning the rigid fixations brittle and friable, making the border porous. Design puts the imaginary into play, altering the perception of boundaries and what it means to shift and transgress them.

Keywords:

• US–Mexico border
• border design
• border aesthetics
• creative resistance
• migration
• physical experience

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 See https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/werthein-brinco-t14770, and https://insiteart.org/insite-2005.

2 See also Giudice and Giubilaro (2014, 6f): “Moving bodies and contesting displacements affect the borderline, transforming it into a relational, unstable, and performative space.”

3 On architect Teddy Cruz: https://visarts.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/teddy-cruz.html, and https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/01/the-urban-laboratory-on-the-san-diego-tijuana-border-teddy-cruz-fonna-forman/512222/.

4 The “progress” being made on the construction of the wall can be viewed on the website of the US Customs and Border Protection: https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/along-us-borders/border-wall-system (July 28, 2020). For a critical approach towards the expanding border wall see: Jessica Kutz (2020a).

5 For the appropriation of ancient Egyptian obelisks and obelisk forms in the nineteenth century, see, for Paris, Kemp (1979); for London, Müller (2018). Melanie Ulz (2008) has analyzed in great detail and breadth the cultural and intellectual appropriation of antiquity-Egyptian canon of forms as a strategy of legitimation and scientification in the context of national representation and colonial expansion, moving beyond a focus on the obelisk form. Architectural Egyptomania in the German context has been described by Maxi Schreiber (2018); see also Erik Iversen (1968/1972) and, in general, Brian A. Curran et al. (2009).

6 The US conception of racial purity that had to be defended against miscegenation also contrasted with Mexican concepts of precisely (biological and cultural) mestizaje as nation-building, as formulated and widely received by Manuel Gamio (Forjando Patria, 1916) and José Vasconcelos (La Raza Cósmica, 1925). Moreover, it should be noted that the Southwest in particular was, in many cases, inhabited precisely by “ethnic Mexicans,” and Anglos also engaged in intra-national racializing in order to establish their hegemonic dominance. Anthropologist, sociologist, and archaeologist Gamio emigrated in 1925 to the United States, where he worked for the Social Science Research Council in Washington DC on the subjects of migration and labor and published two books: Mexican Immigration to the United States (1930) and The Mexican Immigrant – His Life Story (1931).

7 Mary E. Mendoza traces parallel racializing of Mexicans and the construction of physical borders: “Nature in the form of a tick acted as a catalyst for the construction of fences along the border and for the intensifying racial tension that still surrounds the border today” (Mendoza 2018, 80).

8 For the connection with the territorial expansion of the United States in the nineteenth century, see also Sarah J. Moore: “in the United States […] it seems the border has always been part of the national imaginary. In the United States, expansion, and the idea of the border, began within an international context, from its origins as a nation to its movement from east to west and south to north” (Malagamba-Ansótegui and Moore 2018, 119). See also Truettner (1991) and Glenn (2002). For the gender implications of the colonial conquering and appropriating of space, see Michalsky (2011) and Hölz (1998).

9 Although the original RFP from the CBP is no longer available online, it was widely covered by the national press at the time. See Caplan (2017) and Reuters (2017).

10 For all eight prototypes, see: https://www.borderwallprototypes.org/gallery (July 28, 2020).

11 Four models are made of reinforced concrete, the others of steel or a mix of various materials.

12 See also Ursula Biemann’s video Performing the Border (1999): https://vimeo.com/74185298.

13 Here Balibar refers to the psychoanalyst André Green (1992).

14 For the protest calling for stopping the design of detention centers during the COVID-19 pandemic, see Jessica Kutz (2020b). For a revision and a harsh critique of “humanitarianism” in the idea and practice of refugee camps, see Agier 2011. Agier concludes: “the protection of the stateless […] is no more than a euphemistic justification for controlling the undesirables” (211).

15 Following Brita Fladvad Nielsen, I understand humanitarian design as bound to “designerly approaches” towards the “goal of dignity [which] implies that the aim of humanitarian action is value based and human centered, as is design science” (Fladvad Nielsen 2020, 98). She strengthens: “‘humanitarian design’ should also refer to the application of ‘designerly’ approaches that assist crisis-affected people in reaching a situation in which they can live with dignity” (ibid.). Katerina Rozakou (2020) adds to this: “Since its inception, Western humanitarianism has not only transcended national borders but also directly challenged them through the concept of universal humanity,” referring to William Walters’ definition of “humanitarian borders” as “complex assemblage[s], comprising particular forms of humanitarian reason” (Walters 2011, 142).

16 For a broader context, dealing not only with detention centers, camps, and other forms of emergency and crisis group dwellings, see Johnson (2011, 470), who argues – and I agree with him – for (intellectual, public, pluralized) debate as a mode of design: “[Emily] Pilloton and others who claim that all problems are design problems are basically correct, but their technocratic manifestoes imply that these are problems to be solved by professional designers, and not by unions, social movements, neighborhood assemblies, worker cooperatives, and political organizations through the process of debate and public action.” Liisa Malkki (2015) shifts the focus from those traditionally “in need” of humanitarian aid towards those doing this work both abroad and in domestic settings and demonstrates humanitarian work in a multi-faceted way as “helpful” to those “caring for themselves.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Miriam Oesterreich

Miriam Oesterreich is a professor for Design Theory/Gender Studies at the University of the Arts Berlin. Her current habilitation project focuses on the global entanglements of modernist Mexican Indigenism. She was Athene Young Investigator in the department of Fashion and Aesthetics at Technische Universität Darmstadt and earned her Ph.D. at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2015. She has been a fellow at the Transregional Academy in Buenos Aires and the Ansel-Adams-Fellow at the Center for Creative Photography and University of Arizona. She is Associated Researcher at Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies (HCIAS) and chief editor for the open access online journal Miradas: Journal for the Arts and Culture of the Américas and the Iberian Peninsula. [email protected]